The economy is booming...in Beverly Hills

If you're one of the beautiful people who shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, you're not seeing the effects of $4 dollar gasoline or higher food costs. None of that is putting a furrow into your already Botox'd brow. Because the weather is sunny here and the shopping is divine.

I suppose for sheer entertainment value, it's worth knowing this sort of fact: that there are people out there so wealthy...beyond wealthy...that no amount of economic turmoil affects them. Hard to imagine the global credit crisis not crimping the portfolios of the financier class, but then I'm sure they've socked away a few pennies for a rainy day.

Which I suppose is a good thing, if you look at it. The spending of the ultra-wealthy helps drive the economy (and at this point, it can use all the fuel it can get). Some reports say the wealthy are cutting back spending as well. But a survey cited here looks at those with an average income of $200,000. That's not wealthy. Any third year associate at a white-shoe law firm makes that. It's the gentry I'm talking about. The moguls and superstars and legacy families. The multi-millionaires and billionaires. And their families.

These people don't need to cut back. Which will at some level keep some juice flowing into the economy. Somebody has to sell those wives their $120,000 Hermes Matte crocodile Birkin Bags. Somebody needs to service the wealthy. And I guess that's where the rest of us come in.